Small Amusements

If you, like me, are easily entertained, here is a game to play.

1) Turn on the radio.
2) Tune in to a news/sports station.
3) Turn off the radio, get a slip of paper and a pencil, and get ready.
4) Flick the radio on briefly: listen for the first sentence or complete phrase you hear, then jot it down.
5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you have gathered sufficient material.
6) Send a letter to someone composed entirely out of your new lines, or, if you have a friend handy, try to have a civil conversation with everything you've written down.

Please note that this game is particularly entertaining when played between the hours of 3 and 6 in the morning.

In other news, the house smells like apple pie, and I heartily approve.

Kites!

They came, they flew, they got the family out of the house. (In January, which, retrospectively, might not have been the best for our health, but it was worth it.)

A Paul Gunther butterfly....


...and a "small" delta-coyne. (Only in the world of kites and passenger jets does five feet of wing mean "small.")

A note to any other Missouri kite fliers fighting with variable winds; delta coynes. Seriously. They’re unshakable, and they’ll climb up on anything from 5 to 25 mph, easy. We launched Tiny from a standing takeoff, no assistant, to 150 feet in 40 seconds.

We're gonna need a longer line.

A Time for Kites

When it's early January and a pleasant 71 degrees Fahrenheit outside, it becomes a time for kites. I went out to Faust Park on Sunday with the family and enjoyed the wind with "Yasui," my uber-cheap, half-tailed, 40 feet of single-line Edo kite. He's flown in the sea breeze off the eastern coast of Japan, and he did fairly well in the skies over middle America, but a paper kite only lives so long.

So now it's a time for new kites.

We've got a pair on order from Into the Wind, but until they arrive, I'm enjoying myself over at the Kite Plan Base.

(Highly recommend that there Kite Plan Base.)

Caterpillar Love

I would like one of these, please.

Just a chance to meet one would be awesome.

(Looks even spikier as a hatchling.)

Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu

あけましておめでとうございます！

Happy New Year!

Two-thousand and eight is the year of the rat or mouse. You can make your own little mouse mascot with the pattern and instructions provided by Runo over at Nuno Life.